


paper thin

by Audity



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers
Genre: Love Confessions, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-21
Updated: 2016-07-21
Packaged: 2018-07-25 22:01:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7548778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Audity/pseuds/Audity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, when they lay in bed at night, Bucky asks Steve to tell him about when they were kids in Brooklyn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	paper thin

**Author's Note:**

> this is based on a conversation that my friend lauren and i had, about the dichotomy between steve's memories of bucky only being a few years old, but bucky's memories of steve being buried under 70 years as the winter soldier. she's also the one who beta'd this fic and i love her for it
> 
> the title is from the song paper thin by astrid s which just happened to come on the stucky playlist i was listening to as i wrote this fic (therefore it has very little to do with the actual plot of the fic)

Bucky knew he wasn’t the same person he’d been before he’d fallen out of the train. You can’t spend 70 years as a goddamn assassin and come out the same. It didn’t stop him from feeling guilty as all hell when he couldn’t be Bucky Barnes, the Don Juan that Steve had known as a kid. It wasn’t that Bucky didn’t want to remember all the shit he and Steve had gotten into as stupid teenagers, but for Steve it had just been a handful of years ago. Bucky had 70 years’ worth of memories from a different life that he had to sift through, and none of them were good. If he remembered something about him and Steve, he remembered the scared eyes of a sixteen-year-old target, not all that different from what they had been. If Steve told him something about the Howling Commandos he’d see himself as the Winter Soldier ready to shoot a world leader instead of a Nazi.

Steve insisted he understood this, and that he didn’t want to push Bucky, but when Steve would unthinkingly start another conversation with, “Hey, Buck, remember when we were seventeen, and--” He’d cut himself off when he’d see Bucky flinch, and mutter something about “maybe later,” then offer him some food and propose another movie night. (They were currently in the middle of Star Wars, Bucky realizing that maybe those nights up on the roof of their apartment building watching the stars hadn’t  _ only _ been because he could lay closer to Steve than strictly necessary.)

It was ridiculously hard to find some balance between what the two of them had had before and what they had the potential to be now. 

If Bucky had been worried about anything, above all else, it had been that Steve would be disgusted with him once they got to know each other again, once Steve finally realized that he was never going to get his best friend from Brooklyn back. But even as Steve slowly pulled the less pleasant details out of Bucky regarding the last 70 years, he continued to  _ constantly _ be around Bucky. If anything, he was more tactile than he had been as a scrawny kid who got knocked on his ass every other day. 

The problem with this was that there was no way in hell any of it was more than platonic; it was just a residual habit from long, cold Brooklyn winter nights where they had to combine the blankets off their two twin beds and sleep burrowed as close to each other as possible to keep from freezing to death. Even sharing a tent when they were in the field with the commandos, the two of them had  ~~ probably ~~ almost definitely been closer than the rest of the team had been in the other tents. Hey, that’s just what two guys who had been friends since before they could remember did, right? (Bucky knew it really wasn’t, but who was he to complain when he had his best friend as close to him as he could manage?)

Eventually, Bucky stopped panicking every time Steve tried to talk about something from the 30s. He, with the help of Sam Wilson, and some of the other Avengers, slowly learned how to internalize the fact that he was not the Winter Soldier, and the idea that Bucky Barnes was not truly the one who had committed God knows how many assassinations. (Neither he nor Tony realized how much it meant when Tony forgave Bucky for his parents.)

After a while, when he and Steve would go to sleep, in the same bed, because Steve insisted it was just easier to calm Bucky down from his nightmares when he didn’t have to get up ( _God_ , did Bucky feel guilty about that), Bucky would ask Steve to tell him about whatever story he wanted, or he’d ask him to fill in the gaps of a memory he sort of remembered. Bucky, against his better judgement, because  _ dammit _ , he couldn’t get his hopes up, noticed that Steve generally left out the nights that the two of them went out with a couple girls Bucky had picked up, trying to find one that would love Steve like Bucky loved Steve, who saw past his diminutive frame to the fiery spirit that had lived within Steve since the womb.

He tried not to read too much into that.

One night, Bucky had gone to bed, lying on what had become his side of the bed, waiting for Steve to get back from some Avengers shit on another continent, and he couldn’t help but smile when he was pulled from drowsiness by the feeling of Steve sliding under the other side of the blankets with a whispered, “Hey, Buck.”

“Tell me a story, Stevie,” Bucky said, turning so he could face Steve. Steve shot him a Look at his use of the nickname, but let it go.

“M’kay,” Steve murmured, “Come here.” And then Steve was closer to Bucky than he had any right to be, and Bucky really couldn’t be blamed if his breath caught in his throat. There was no way he’d been that close since they’d started this. “What do you wanna hear?” he asked, his baby blues twinkling in the moonlight coming through the window, and Bucky dreaded the day Steve looked at anyone else with that look.  _ Bucky’s  _ look.

“Doesn’t matter,” Bucky said, pushing down a memory that had surfaced earlier in the week, one that he didn’t think Steve would be too thrilled to recount.

(Bucky saw a discarded wine bottle, and lips raw from kissing, and remembered the smooth feel of pale skin against his rough, work-hardened hands.)

Steve pondered for a second before making eye contact with Bucky again. “Well, there was this one night, it wasn’t long before you shipped out, I think. I don’t know how the hell you managed to afford a decent bottle of red wine, but you came waltzing in through the door, grinning from ear to ear, and holding up the bottle. ‘Look what I got, Stevie,’ you said, proud of yourself like a cat would be if it’d brought a bird home to his owner.

“I didn’t ask you how you got it, maybe I should have, but we sat there talking about whatever until the bottle was empty. I really can’t believe we never ran out of stuff to talk about.” Steve laughed. “But anyway, eventually you started to talk about a couple of dames you’d met earlier on the docks, and I told you to shut up.”

(Bucky saw another image, one of Steve’s hand on his wrist, his lips parted in a fucking obscene way, and he felt his heart rate speed up.)

“You were always talkin’ about the girls that you’d found, and trying to get one to like me or whatever. You couldn’t understand wantin’ to wait. ‘C’mon Stevie,’ you’d say, ‘have a little fun.’ You always kept the blonde ones for yourself, you know that? I wonder if you ever thought about that.”

Bucky suddenly wondered if this story was for his benefit anymore.

“Anyway, I told you to shut up, and I felt myself move closer. I dunno if I meant to do that, but we’d just split a bottle of good red wine, and I was so small I couldn’t help but be a lightweight. You started to ask me what the hell I was doing, but I cut you off.”

“Steve,” Bucky started, but Steve shot him a pleading look, asking Bucky to let him finish this.

“I don’t really know how I got so close to you, but neither of us cared. ‘I don’t want either of them girls, Buck, I want you.’ That’s exactly what I said, I remember it clear as day. How much of a goddamn cliche can you get? You looked like a fucking deer in the headlights. I can’t believe you never noticed before then.”

Steve stopped for a few seconds then, looking at Bucky’s face, and he reached out to grab Bucky’s hand then, entwining their fingers, and Bucky’s breath caught in his throat, and he wondered if Steve realized how closely it mirrored what he’d done back in the 40s. “I kissed you then.” He smiled sadly. “You kissed me back. Even three sheets to the wind we both realized that what we were doing could get us thrown in jail. I don’t think either of us cared. We didn’t do anything other than kissin’, but the next morning when I woke up in my bed and smelled you making some oatmeal like nothin’ had happened I didn’t wanna bring it back up. Obviously you didn’t remember--”

“I remembered,” Bucky said, suddenly. It sounded too loud in the dark of the early hours of the morning. Steve stared at him, lips parted just slightly, and Bucky said again, “I remembered. I remembered then when I was making the oatmeal, and I remember now. I remembered earlier this week, but, God, Stevie, I didn’t wanna make you uncomfortable or nothin’. You’ve had time to rebuild a new life here, why would you still be interested in your broken childhood friend?” Bucky laughed, but it wasn’t a nice sound. 

And then Steve was suddenly much,  _ much _ closer, and Bucky felt like he couldn’t even blink. “Maybe it’s because you’ve always been more than just a ‘childhood friend’, Buck. And you’re not broken, maybe just bent a little.” He paused for a second. “Can I?” he asked. And Bucky nodded, knowing what Steve was asking,  __ and then there were  unfairly soft lips on his, and it was one of the most intimate things Bucky had ever experienced. (All his memories or not, he was certain.) Then Steve pulled Bucky close to his chest, and Bucky breathed in the smell of Steve’s soap (incredibly similar to the soap they’d used before the war), and he felt his breathing even out. For the first time since he’d run into Steve in the apartment in Romania, he felt  _ safe. _ He knew that wasn’t the end of it. He knew he’d keep having nightmares, he knew he’d keep having panic attacks, and he knew he’d never truly be able to get rid of the fucking guilt, but he couldn’t quiet the hope that knowing Steve would be on his side one hundred percent would make things just that much easier.

“Love you, punk,” Bucky whispered into Steve’s chest, and he could hear the smile in Steve’s voice when he responded, “Love you too, Buck.”

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on tumblr as audjolras, and recently i've just been crying about marvel so if you're interested hmu


End file.
